Peace-prize committee and State Department have trouble connecting the dots

http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THE most popular cliche about the post-Sept. 11 era is that on that day,
everything about our world changed. But like all such generalizations, this
particular piece of journalistic pablum is as off target as it is on the mark.
For all of the many things that have changed, the thinking of our most
important institutions has not. In fact, for some, the events of Sept. 11
seem to have only reinforced a belief in past mistakes.

LAUDING THE UNITED NATIONS
Take, for instance, the committee that awards the annual Nobel Peace Prize.
Though it is hard to speak of the Nobel Committee with a straight face, a lot
of people still take this comical institution seriously. Indeed, the peace
prize actually predates most of the other institutions of self-congratulation
that various industries promote, such as the Oscars, the Emmys and the
Pulitzers. And the cash prize that goes with it is nothing to be sneezed at.
Some of its past winners have been worthy. But, like the Oscars, many are
not. The truth is, a peace prize that can be given to a terrorist like Yasser
Arafat makes the the Country Western Music Awards look like an convocation of
intellectuals.

Perhaps the way to think about the awarding of the prestigious prize this
year to the United Nations and its secretary general, Kofi Annan, is to see
him as the diplomatic equivalent of cinematic stinkers like "Erin
Brockovitch" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," which competed for the
Best Film Oscar this past year.

Why not celebrate a United Nations whose "peacekeeping force" in southern
Lebanon hid evidence related to the cross-border kidnapping of three Israeli
soldiers, which took place under the noses of U.N. troops and who may have
even cooperated with the Hezbollah terrorists who committed the crime?
Why not give a peace prize to an institution that just a month ago held a
conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, which turned into one of the
biggest festivals of Jew-hatred since the Nazi Nuremberg rallies in 1930s'
Germany?

And why not laud an world body that just voted a country that is a well-known
sponsor and practitioner of terrorism - Syria - onto its powerful Security
Council?

Annan is pleasant, presentable and has managed not to offend any major
countries during his time as the head inmate of the Tower of Babel on
Manhattan's Turtle Bay. But nothing about him has been so conspicuous as his
unwillingness to confront the culture of moral equivalence between democrats
and murderers at the United Nations.

Are they kidding? Unfortunately, they're not.

WAY TO GO, RUDY
Of course, not everybody in New York has lost their minds. Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani has covered himself in glory for his inspired leadership after the
World Trade Center catastrophe. Last week, he followed up on this achievement
by showing the kind of backbone and devotion to truth that characterizes
America at its best.

Giuliani returned a $10 million check for a relief fund donated by Saudi
Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud after the zillionaire
attached a letter blaming the terror attack on American support for Israel.
Rudy rightly identified Alwaleed's lying diatribe as the sort of thing that
was itself the cause of terrorism.

But some reaction to Rudy's gutsy decision in the New York tabloids also
showed how some things don't change. The New York Daily News highlighted the
story with a huge "Shove It!" headline on their front page and endorsed
Guiliani's move in an editorial.

But the normally rabid pro-Guiliani and fervently pro-Israel New York Post
did neither, even though such a story was seemingly made for them.

Why did they downplay it and refrain from comment? This puzzled reader found
the answer in a sidebar about the prince. It turns out that he is, among
other things, a major stockholder in News Corp., the multinational media
conglomerate that owns the Post.

The editorial stands of the Post have called upon the nation to draw
conclusions about the terror attack and act accordingly. But in their
boardroom, money still talks louder than principle.

Also interesting was one congressional follow-up to Rudy's Bronx cheer. Rep.
Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., an African-American Congresswoman from the Atlanta
region, lost no time in writing Alwaleed to blast Rudy, denounce America as a
racist nation, agree with the Saudi about Israeli perfidy, and then asked him
to send the money to her favorite local charities!

Jewish fundraisers who write checks to Democratic House members should
forward any future McKinney requests to her Saudi pals.

SAME TACTIC, DIFFERENT REACTION
Even greater evidence for an inability to think clearly after Sept. 11 is the
growing conviction that the United States is paying for lukewarm Arab support
for the war in Afghanistan by bashing Israel.

Attacks on America are acts of war that President Bush has rightly determined
must be punished by bombing the hideouts of the terrorists and by
apprehending the killers, "dead or alive."

But terror bombings inflicted on Israelis are not thought to be quite so
serious. That's the only way to explain the official State Department
reaction to the news that Israeli forces had knocked off the Palestinian
Hamas terror leader responsible for the bombing of a Tel Aviv disco that left
more than 20 youngsters dead.

Rather than understand that Israel's action was an act of self-defense and no
different from American actions in Afghanistan against the Al Qaeda terrorist
organization, the State Department actually condemned Israel!

A spokesman for the State Department said there was no parallel between the
two actions.

And he did so with a straight face.

I'd like to think that this is just nonsense put out to placate America's
Arab "coalition partners." But the department's open talk of reviving
Clinton-administration proposals for dividing Jerusalem and giving the Temple
Mount to a terror-driven Palestinian state makes it clear this is no joke.

The old Arabist thinking that dominated that institution for decades is alive
and well - and making a mockery of President Bush's promises to root out
terrorism everywhere.

SIGNS OF HOPE
Amid all of this old thinking is some new hope. In the last week, both The
Washington Post and The New York Times editorialized on America's problematic
Saudi ally. Both newspapers denounced the Saudi regime,which has attempted to
play it both ways on terror: giving lip service to support for U.S.
anti-terror efforts, while at the same time funding terror groups and
stonewalling on terror investigations.

Even the Times' smart-aleck columnist Thomas L. Friedman now seems to
understand that the Saudis and other "moderate" Arab regimes - and not Israel
- are the real sources of rage in the Arab world. Hatred of Israel is
deep-rooted in the culture of these countries, but the focus on the
Palestinians is a diversion that allows the ruling elites to avoid scrutiny
and the toppling of their governments.

As Israeli leader Natan Sharansky stated in an article in The Wall Street
Journal last week, victory in the war against terror means more than the
defeat of Osama bin Laden. Peace won't be achieved unless it also includes
the export of Western democracy to the Arab world.

These articles were a good beginning that might herald a re-evaluation of an
American foreign policy increasingly devoted to placating unpopular and
unreliable Arab regimes.

But expecting the self-perpetuating elites of Washington and New York to
connect the dots between the truth about Saudi Arabia and the stupidity of
American foreign policy is perhaps asking too much of them. It is easier for
them to cocoon themselves in the familiar world of failed ideas than to wake
up to the changed realities of modernity.